CE Ely Cathedral Sunday, 5th April 2015

[Quilisma]

Happy Easter from all of us!

[Petrushka]

Never been to Ely but seen the Cathedral from the railway. Looks like a summer visit is called for perhaps combined with Newmarket!

An enjoyable Service and absolutely loved the organ voluntary, so much so that, as I was recording it for a slightly deferred hearing, I immediately listened to it again and turned the volume up.

[ardcarp]

An enjoyable Service

Yes; and I think I heard the choristers doing a 'sunrise service' [?] on R4. If that was live, they must be well knackered by now!

[Quilisma]

Ardcarp, the Radio 4 Sunrise service with the boys was recorded yesterday afternoon at two, but yes, they have had a very busy schedule indeed since Wednesday: Tenebrae on Wednesday evening, (Victoria Tenebrae Responsories), Chrism Eucharist with the Blessing of the Oils and Renewal of Ordination Vows (Thorne Mass of St Thomas and Lole The Father's love) on Maundy Thursday morning, the Liturgy of Maundy Thursday, Sung Eucharist and the Washing of Feet (Howells Collegium Regale Communion Service, Duruflé Ubi caritas and Bairstow The Lamentation) on Maundy Thursday evening, the Proclamation of the Cross with the Liturgy of the Sacrament (Victoria St John Passion, Victoria Reproaches and Byrd Ave verum corpus) on Good Friday afternoon, then Good Friday Evensong (Lotti Crucifixus, Farrant Short Service Cornyshe Woefully arrayed). And several rehearsals; the girls only arrived back yesterday so the combined choristers had some intensive rehearsals in the morning before the boys recorded the Radio 4 Sunrise service, and afterwards the older boys w ent on the famous rooftop tour mentioned above! Luckily the men took care of Thursday Evensong (Obrecht O vos omnes), yesterday Evensong (a very short service indeed) and the Easter Vigil (Aedvardus de Ortona Missa Sine Nomine and anonymous Worcester Fragment Alleluia psallat, a very LONG service indeed!), which owing to the shifted timings was brought forward to yesterday evening, such that according to our local reckoning Christ was risen approximately three and a half hours prematurely! And then there was the small matter of Festal Orchestral Eucharist this morning (Mozart Coronation Mass and Mozart Laudate Dominum), rehearsal for which began at nine; the service finished at about midday, giving us about an hour for a very swift lunch in the Lady Chapel before sound checks and rehearsal started at one, finishing about five minutes before it was time to line up to come in for the service!

So yes, Holy Week and Easter are quite taxing, not just vocally, and not just for the youngsters, and certainly by no means only in Ely, but it's an enormous privilege to be doing it, even though one really does have to keep one's wits about one as rehearsal time, particularly with the relevant personnel assembled, is extremely limited: something very little understood in choirs which have the luxury of lots of time and space in which to prepare everything down to the finest detail. Sometimes those of us with crammed service schedules and music lists just have to trust that the individual singers' powers of extrapolation, sensitivity, concentration and teamwork will resolve at least most of the potential raggedness in performance.

Knackered or not, the boys and girls seemed as chirpy as ever today, even after the service. They take it all in their stride and they certainly don't moan. After all, they also understand how blessed they are to be doing it.

[DracoM]

Well said and for so many of us and other practitioners.
Holy Week is one heck of a marathon, but what keeps the spirits etc unflagging is that some the very best music in the pantheon is available for services. I look down lists and drool.

Many thanks Q'ma for everything Ely has done for us this Easter season. When does term re-start?

[Simon Biazeck]

I really enjoyed the anthem by Francis Grier - well worth the effort. Pleased to hear well-written contemporary church music.

[ardcarp]

I really enjoyed the anthem by Francis Greer - well worth the effort. Pleased to hear well-written contemporary church music.

Hear hear.

Grier?

[DracoM]

Totally agree about the [ahem] GrIEr.

[Simon Biazeck]

Now corrected! It was late, the fingers slipped - you understand.

[DracoM]

Bien sur, mon brave!

[Quilisma]

Thank you, everyone, for your kind words, so far, at least... If anyone missed this service and wants to listen, or indeed if anyone heard this service and wants to listen again, it's here on iPlayer, as usual: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pqrwx.

The Radio 4 Sunrise Service, recorded by the boys only on Saturday afternoon in a very short slot in their schedule, is also on iPlayer, here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pkxz3. It's not the over-coiffured, sieved-out and clinically refined aesthetic amply championed by certain other choirs, but a certain enthusiastic spontaneity and as-it-comes joyful rawness is far from inappropriate at Easter, I venture to suggest. I think Magnificat might find something to appreciate in this service, at least, as it prominently features the Dean, with whom Magnificat has said he was familiar in one of his previous posts as Precentor of St Albans. He seems to be particularly good at radio. We think he is an excellent Dean!

Delighted to hear that some people appreciated the Grier piece. Twelve of the fourteen boys singing on Sunday, and seven of the fourteen men, had recorded it back in 2014 for our most recent CD, with the composer giving very helpful comments and suggestions, and the rest of the boys and a few more of the men sang it when we revised it for the first performance on Remembrance Sunday, but it was new to the girls (fifteen in number, I think) and to a few of the Extra Gentlemen. Circumstances dictated that we didn't get to sing it together as the full choir until the afternoon rehearsal just before the service (or indeed any of the rest of the music, albeit mostly better known). It was quite cramped, with seven men on each side in the very back rows of the stalls and the girls and boys occupying what would normally be the two rows of choir stalls on each side, and evidently the microphones were quite close in, with the result that the levels presumably had to be turned down quite low, but holding the service in the Choir rather than the Nave (from the Octagon) felt intimate and warm and special, besides which it wouldn't have been possible for the engineers to set up in time in the Octagon after Orchestral Festal Eucharist! I'm sure we'll welcome the return of all the processions and incense and all the trimmings next year, back at the usual time of 16:00, but obviously that wouldn't have worked on the radio and it would have taken far too long...

[mopsus]

.... I think she deserved a less ugly expression, ....

Quite. I think the face of a statue (unless it's small and high up so you can't really see the features) is crucial. I was amused to look round the Ely website some while ago and see a gallery of pictures of the Lady Chapel from various angles, carefully avoiding showing the statue in any of them.

There's a regrettable trend for drastically abridging hymns in CE broadcasts at the moment. 'Jesus lives!' with only 3 verses seems hardly worth having at all.

[Petrushka]

There's a regrettable trend for drastically abridging hymns in CE broadcasts at the moment. 'Jesus lives!' with only 3 verses seems hardly worth having at all.

It's even more regrettable when they omit the advertised final hymn altogether. No doubt due to the time factor, I'm sure, though one has a picture of frantic signalling going on in order to convey that it's to be omitted. Seems rather silly just for the sake of a couple of minutes over the allotted time span, when R3 can easily make it up later.

[Quilisma]

I feel I ought to apologise for my rather blunt comments about the change in the canticles from the original plan. The decision to do Murrill in E rather than Howells St Paul's was, in the context both of this service and of the culmination of an extremely full-on Holy Week with very limited rehearsal time, eminently sensible, musically and vocally, even without considering the factor of timing constraints.

I understand that all concerned parties agreed that the change would be a good idea; it was NOT an imposition by the BBC. What provoked me to mention it was that a number of people, on discovering the change from Howells St Paul's to Murrill in E, made comments to me intimating that they inferred that the choir must have been judged not up to broadcasting Howells St Paul's. That was emphatically not the case at all. So I mentioned it preemptively so as to curtail any such wild speculation on here. But it was inappropriate and inaccurate to imply that the BBC had pushed this on us. It was a sensible decision with mutual consent. Besides, people will think what people will think.

Eagle-eyed people may have spotted that we now have a tenor vacancy; closing date was today, so fingers crossed! Meanwhile, those who have bees in their bonnets about chorister recruitment might be interested to read about our latest initiative, here: http:/www.elycathedral.org/media-cen...ger-choristers. Conditions of boy and girl choristerships and sixth-form choral and organ scholarships are outlined here: http://www.kingsely.org/home-2/admis...-organ-awards/. We also seem recently to have taken the plunge and joined Twitter, so, if you do that sort of thing, feel free to follow us! https://twitter.com/ElyCathChoir